This mosaic combines 137 images captured by Cassini’s wide-angle camera as it made the first dive of the mission’s Grand Finale on 26 April 2017. It shows a vast swath of Saturn’s atmosphere, from the north polar vortex to the boundary of the hexagon-shaped jet stream, to details in bands and swirls at middle latitudes and beyond.

During the dive, the altitude above the clouds changed from 72 400 to 8374 km, while the image scale changed from 8.7 km/pixel to 1 km/pixel.

The bottom of the mosaic is curved, where Cassini rotated to point its high-gain antenna in the direction of motion as a protective measure before crossing Saturn’s ring plane. Imaging scientists refer to this long, narrow mosaic as a “noodle” in planning the image sequence.

This false-colour view from the international Cassini spacecraft gazes toward the rings beyond Saturn's sunlit horizon. Along the planet’s limb at left a thin, detached haze can be seen.

This view is a false-colour composite made using images taken through red, green and ultraviolet filters. The images were obtained with the narrow-angle camera on 16 July 2017, some 1.25 million km from Saturn. Image scale is about 7 km/pixel on Saturn.

Recent images of “plateau” features in Saturn’s C-ring reveal a streaky texture that is very different from the textures of the regions around them.

The central feature in this image, Plateau P5, is found some 84 800 km from Saturn’s centre. It is situated amid some undulating structure typical of this region of the C-ring.

The enhanced version (right) reveals that the plateau itself is shot through with elongated streaks. This provides information about ways in which the ring particles are interacting with each other, although the details not well understood.

The image was taken on 29 May 2017 with the narrow-angle camera from a distance of about 64 100 km. The image scale is 445 m/pixel.

This image of Saturn’s C-ring shows a “plateau” (known as P1), about 76 200 km from Saturn’s centre, situated amid some undulating structure typical of this region of the C-ring.

This image, especially the enhanced version (right), reveals three different textures with different kinds of structure. The plateau itself is shot through with elongated streaks, while the brighter parts of the undulating structure have more clumpy textures.

By contrast, the dimmer parts of the undulating structure have no apparent texture at all. These textures provide information about different ways in which the ring particles are interacting with each other, though scientists have not yet worked out what it means.

This image was taken on 4 June 2017, with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera from a distance of 51 830 km. The image scale is 325 m/pixel.

This colourful spectrogram represents data collected by Cassini’s Radio and Plasma Wave Science instrument as it crossed through Saturn’s D-ring on 28 May 2017.

As tiny, dust-sized particles strike Cassini and its antennas, the particles are vaporised into tiny clouds of plasma, or electrically excited gas. These tiny explosions make a small electrical signal that Cassini can detect. The data can be converted to visible and audio formats.

Particle impacts are seen to increase in frequency in the spectrogram and in the audible ‘pops’ around the time of ring crossing as indicated by the red/orange spike just before 14:23 on the plot shown here.

Labels on the x-axis indicate time (top line), distance from the planet’s centre in Saturn radii, or Rs (middle), and latitude on Saturn beneath the spacecraft (bottom).

This mosaic of 30 images was captured by the international Cassini spacecraft’s wide-angle camera on 29 June 2017, as it raced toward the gap between Saturn and its rings during one of 22 close passes over Saturn of the mission’s Grand Finale.

The images were captured in near-infrared wavelengths, which is sensitive to Saturn’s cloud-top altitudes.

For the first frame of the mosaic, Cassini’s camera was pointing towards about 80ºN as the spacecraft was flying 26 000 km above the top of the clouds at 45º N. When the last frame was captured, the orbiter was 13 000 km above 30ºN and looking straight down at the planet.